Failure analysis research of structural integrity problems

With the growing railway service around the world, more people can get from one place to another easily. Safety of the passengers remains the priority of railway operators. Therefore, the structural integrity of the railway system is very crucial in ensuring their safety. Fatigue failure poses as a danger to railways and may cause accidents to occur. Rails may fail due to fatigue in many ways. By predicting the behaviour of crack propagation in railway, it can help to ensure that the railway system is safe from imminent danger. This report will be discussing about the fracture mechanics and fatigue problems faced by rails in their lifetime. The rail model UIC 60 will be used in this project. ABAQUS, a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software will be used in this project to analyse the crack propagation on rail head as a result of tension from rolling contact fatigue (RCF). In addition, this project will also discuss the effect of different initial crack size on the crack propagation rate and how it influences them. This project will also study how simulation software can be used to study real life railway fatigue problems. This can help future studies to adopt this method of testing for their research. The author will then compare the simulation results with applicable experimental data derived from past studies. The results concluded that the numerical solution has a higher rate of crack propagation as compared to the simulation solution and this will be further discussed in the report.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering